The Sword in the Statue
"Lily, wake up."
She tossed under the covers, cracked her sleepy eyes open, and yawned without quite sitting up.
"Hmm... that's unusual. Oppa's up before me."
"Today's the day."
"Huh?"
"I said today's the day."
That got through. She blinked herself properly awake and put on a serious face—not an expression I saw from her often.
"Are you ready?"
"I am. You?"
"Me too."
"Let's pack first."
"Bread, water, vegetables, meat, fruit... what else should we bring?"
"How are we supposed to carry all that? No—why is it nothing but food in the first place?"
"We don't even know how long this is going to take. We should prepare as much as we can!"
"Two days at the most. We might have to sleep outside, so pack a sleeping bag. As for food... swap the bread for hardtack, the meat for jerky, and the fruit for the dried kind. Cut the bulk down as far as it'll go. We'd be better off taking extra water instead. If it rains out of nowhere, every river and spring we find is going to turn to mud, and clean water actually matters."
"You don't even know what the quest is, or what's waiting for us. How can you promise it's two days?"
"I know."
"How?"
The truth was, I'd already done this once.
"Because I'm the Hero."
"Hah. How convenient."
"Anyway, pack it like that for me. I need to go see the king."
I made my way to the throne room.
"Good morning."
"Ah, there you are. I've been waiting. I hear you've been training hard."
"I have."
"I thought so. You look like you've filled out. Is it today?"
"It is."
"Then I wish you luck. I'm sorry I have nothing more to offer you than that."
"There's no need to be. I'll be going, then."
Lily was waiting just outside the doors of the audience chamber.
"Let's go, Lily."
"Yeah. Let's go."
"Why do you seem more excited about this than I am..."
"Well, it's like the first gate Oppa has to pass through to become a real Hero. The first step. That kind of feeling."
"Well. Thanks for thinking of me. But do you actually know where we're going?"
"Oh. Right. Where are we supposed to go?"
She stopped dead in the middle of the path.
"Where did you think we were headed?"
"I was just following you, Oppa."
"Then you were doing just fine."
"Then we could've just kept walking! Why'd you have to tease me!"
"Because it's funny."
Lily made a bizarre noise I couldn't even begin to parse.
"So Oppa knows because he's a real Hero, is that it? You know what the quest actually is?"
"Yeah."
"That's not an answer... explain it properly."
"Alright. Look at the oracle. It said to set out on the full moon, once two months had passed, didn't it?"
"Did it?"
I'd explained it to her several times already. What had she even been listening to?
"Ahem. Anyway. All we have to do is walk in the direction of the full moon."
"And when do we stop? Do we just keep walking forever?"
"No. Only at the start. Here, look at this."
I picked a fallen twig up off the ground and started drawing in the dirt as I talked.
"This is the sky, and this is the moon."
I sketched a half-circle, then a smaller circle inside it.
"You know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, right?"
"Yeah."
"The moon does the same thing. It rises, and it moves as time passes. Like this."
I drew a long, arcing curve and tapped a point along the middle of it.
"This mark is where the moon sits when it's due south. We walk until the moon is sitting exactly in the south, and then..."
"And then?"
"An old woman shows up."
"That is so random. And if you walk faster or slower you'd end up standing in a completely different place."
"Which means that old woman isn't an ordinary person, obviously."
She wasn't. She was something like an agent of the gods. The only reason I knew any of this was because, in another life, I had walked south on a whim and run straight into that old hag.
Wasn't this first quest a little too contrived, though? How was anyone supposed to figure this out on their own?
"But why south, of all directions? There are plenty of others."
Truth was, I didn't know either. They'd probably just picked a direction and reverse-engineered a reason for it.
"Well, the Demon King is the witch of the Northern Lands, right? So that makes me the Hero of the South. Something like that."
Sorry, Lily. I don't know either. Just swallow the plausible-sounding lie, would you?
"Huh. I see... There was more meaning to it than I thought."
She actually bought that?
"So what does the old woman do for you? Grant a wish or something?"
"She gives you a map."
"A map of what?"
"A map to the thing we're actually looking for."
Lily straightened up from where she'd been bent over the drawing.
"Alright, good. This Lily understands everything. Except for one thing."
"Which is?"
"You said we have to follow the moon. It's daytime. There is no moon!"
"Ah, there's a way around that. We've got the sun, don't we? You can tell the time from the sun's position, and if you know the time, you can tell where the moon is sitting beyond the horizon. So if you use the sun, you can figure out when the moon, down below the horizon, is pointing south."
"Oh, you can do that?"
"Of course you can't. And I have no intention of meeting that old woman anyway."
"You said we needed the map!"
"Yeah."
"And the old woman is the one who gives it to you?"
"Yeah."
"Then we have to go find her!"
"No, we don't."
"Why? Don't tell me you've got a map stashed away somewhere?"
"No."
It'd been twenty years. How was I supposed to remember a map?
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
"I don't have the map. But I do know where the thing we're looking for actually is."
"Where?"
"That thing," I said, and pointed back at the royal castle we had walked out of an hour ago, "is in there."
"There?"
"Yeah."
"Inside the castle?"
"Yeah."
"For real?"
"Yeah."
"Then why did we walk all the way out here! Why did we get up so early! Why did we pack!"
"Come on, we had to set the mood. It's the first quest."
Lily stared at me with a face that said she could not believe what she was looking at.
"Lily. Are you still mad?"
"I'm not mad."
"You're mad."
"I said I'm not!"
She was mad. Obviously.
"Lily, I'm sorry I made you walk first thing in the morning..."
"That's not why I'm mad."
"Ah. So you admit you are mad."
"Grrraaah!"
"I was looking forward to it, okay? Just the two of us, all cozy, sharing bread, sitting by a campfire, sleeping in the same sleeping bag—that kind of thing!"
"The same sleeping bag part is a no."
"Oh, come on!"
"If that's all it is, you don't need to worry. There are going to be plenty of days like that ahead of us."
"Ugh, honestly..."
Color rose in her face. I hadn't seen that look in a long time. She was genuinely adorable.
We came back to the castle, and the two of us stood in the middle of the street.
"So what does this thing look like? Where is it? Ah, wait, I think I've got it. It's in some underground dungeon, right? Or a secret passage?"
"No. I already know where it is, and it's not there. First... first, I need to stop by the blacksmith."
"Don't tell me you're about to say it's in the blacksmith's."
"Well, it's not in the blacksmith's. There is something I need to buy there, though."
"Hello. It's been a while."
"Hello there, Hero. It really has been a while. And the little lady who came with you last time is here too, haha. So, placing another order today? Don't tell me it's a weapon."
"No. I'm looking to buy something off the shelf today."
"Off the shelf... what did you have in mind?"
"Do you have a big hammer? The kind you use to smash rocks."
"Sure. Have a look around."
There it was, tucked in the farthest corner: the biggest hammer of the lot. One look told me it was built to last. An ashen-gray head, a handle of dark wood, and a weight so brutishly heavy it made my arms sing.
"Ahh... now that's a grip."
"Will you be taking this one?"
"Yes. This one... it has a certain nostalgic quality to it."
I paid, and we stepped back out of the shop. Time to get to work.
"Well, it suits you."
"Thanks."
"Yeah. You look like you're about to start work on a construction site."
This girl, I swear...
"Anyway. Nice weather today. How about a little walk?"
"What? We're in the middle of a quest and you want to take a stroll? Is there even anything to look at around here? Why would we go walking?"
"You don't go walking to look at things. If the two of us are wandering around talking like this, that's a walk."
"And who says there's nothing to look at? There's plenty. That statue over there, for instance. What do you think of it?"
"Which one? It's not like there's only one or two of them."
Fair point. There were a lot of statues. This was the Hall of Fame—the plaza where this country had raised monuments to the figures it revered most.
"That one. The biggest."
"Oh, that? Even I know that one. In this country, if you don't know who that is, you're a spy."
"Hmm, who's that? I haven't been here long, so I'm not really sure."
"You should at least know that much. That's the First Knight Commander of the land you're standing on. He may have played an even greater role in founding this country than the first king himself."
"Huh. I see. I had no idea. He must be incredibly respected, then."
"He is. I've even heard there are households that offer prayers to him."
"What a great man. Then watch closely, Lily. Because I'm about to smash him to pieces."
"He is a great man, yeah. Wait, what did you just—"
I was already moving before she could finish the sentence. I put speed into the swing, and the hammer whistled past the statue's face.
"Aw, whiffed it. So close~"
"Are you insane! Oppa! Stop it! Do you not see the people around us? What are you even—"
Two interruptions in a row.
"Uppercut! That one landed~!"
The hammer came down in a vertical arc and punched into a particularly precious-looking part of the statue with a heavy thud.
"Okay, smash it if you have to, but why there..."
The roaring crack of the hammer drew a crowd, thickening by the second.
"Someone's smashing the Knight Commander's statue with a hammer! Hey! Everybody! Over here! Somebody stop him!"
A patriot—presumably—was shouting himself hoarse, and plenty of people came running. None of them, however, looked quite brave enough to close the distance on a lunatic swinging a hammer at blistering speed.
"How are we supposed to stop him..."
"We'll get ourselves killed if we try."
"Wait, who is our house supposed to pray to now?"
The wailing of the crowd did nothing to slow my hammer.
"Solar plexus! Headshot!"
A killing blow to the vital points, and the statue finally came apart in a rain of fragments. Dust boiled up in a thick cloud, and the people around us stood stunned into silence, unable to find a single word.
Then the dust cleared, and what emerged was a young man posed as if drunk on victory—satisfied, apparently, with his battle against a statue—holding a sword so perfectly, impossibly beautiful it almost felt wrong to look at.
"Wait—isn't that the Hero?!"